State of mulez or the crystalization of violence against female bodies and journalistic discourse

Abstract

The following article will analyze the construction of the news item and the newsworthiness criteria present in a criminal act that occurred in 2017, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and from there it will seek to reflect on the category “mule” used to name a young Brazilian woman who was carrying drugs in her body and who is thrown lifelessly from a car where she was driving with other people after breaking down when one of the capsules exploded inside her. It is argued that the example can be framed within a broader context where intersectionality allows shedding light on biases that underlie the construction of the news. Thus, the fact that the press emphasized the nationality of women and the subjectivema “mule” provide a framework that pigeonholes crime within a rhetorical matrix that interrelates crime with class, race and gender structures.